Month: January 2011

Both Matthew Yglesias and Ben Goldacre had posts up today talking up the idea of short electronic books. (By short I mean something like 15000 to 25000 words.) Amazon is starting to promote this market with its Kindle Singles collection. And it seems like a great idea, one that should be imported into philosophy.

There are a lot of philosophical works these days that naturally fit into the fifteen to twenty-five thousand word range. Some of them get published as is, in journals that are happy with long papers (such as Philosophical Review or Philosophers’ Imprint), or in edited collections. Some of them get padded out to make short books. And several of them get broken up into chunks and published disjointedly. (Note for instance that I recently posted twopapers on interest-relative invariantism; together they make one reasonably coherent 20000 word paper, but there’s really nowhere to publish that.)

Having an outlet for pieces that are too long for regular journals, but too short for books, would solve a lot of problems. As Amazon says in their promotion of Kindle Singles, we should look for ways in which a good idea can be “expressed at its natural length”. The mechanics of print publication, especially as it developed in the second half of the twentieth century, produced natural ways to publish ideas that were naturally expressed in under 15000 or over 40000 words, but left a large gap. Hopefully electronic publication can fill that gap.

I am pleased to announce the imminent publication of the winning essay from the 2009 Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholars Prize: “Ontological Nihilism”, by Jason Turner (University of Leeds). It will be the lead article in Vol. 6 of OSM, due early 2011 from Oxford University Press. I am also happy to report that Karen Bennett and I are now co-editors of OSM; Karen has been breathing new life into the series, and the results will already be apparent with Vol. 6.

It is also time to remind all the younger metaphysicians out there that the due date for submission to the 2011 competition is fast approaching! It is NOT January 15 (as last OSM reported), but January 30. The winning essay will be published in OSM (often alongside runners-up) and the author receives an $8,000 prize. You still have a whole month in which to prepare your submissions. Get to it!

The competition is supported by the Ammonius Foundation — which supports a similar $8,000 award for the Younger Scholars Prize for Philosophical Theology, a parallel competition associated with Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (with a deadline of August 31). “Younger” metaphysicians and philosophers of religion (in grad school or within ten years of receiving a Ph.D.) should check out the details at: http://www.ammonius.org/index.php.

Both prizes were dreamt up and are financed by the Ammonius Foundation. The Foundation’s grants have encouraged many younger metaphysicians with generous essay awards (past winners are Rachel Briggs, Graeme A. Forbes, Jason Turner, Jeff Russell, Bradford Skow, Stephan Leuenberger, Matthew McGrath, Cody Gilmore, and Thomas Hofweber), and more senior metaphysicians with individual research grants for projects in metaphysics and philosophy of religion (past recipients include Derek Parfit, Jonathan Schaffer, Mark Johnston, John Hawthorne, Alvin Plantinga, George Bealer, and Jan Cover).

If you just go to the main Ammonius Foundation web site, however, you won’t find any link to a really interesting, closely related page: http://www.comingtounderstanding.com/, the home of Coming to Understanding, the grand metaphysical system constructed by the founder of the Ammonius Foundation, Marc Sanders. The author, aka “Ammonius”, has developed an elaborate monistic, neo-platonic ontological scheme described in a (free!) downloadable book (which includes a critical essay by yours truly, and another by Gordon Graham). There are a lot of interesting ideas in his carefully crafted system, and the religious thrust of the book will resonate with those attracted to a deity like “the Highest One” of Mark Johnston’s recent book, Saving God. (After the manner of philosophers and junior high students, I show my respect for Ammonius’s system by relentlessly attacking it along multiple fronts.)

Marc Sanders is retiring from his role as head of the Ammonius Foundation, and passing the reins to his son, Eric Sanders, who plans to continue the two Younger Scholar Prize competitions, among other things. It has been a real privilege and pleasure to work with Marc and his Foundation over many years. Although Ammonius has a distinctive mission (http://www.ammonius.org/mission.php), much of what the Foundation does has no goal other than to promote serious work in metaphysics (and, now, philosophical theology), no matter the conclusions reached. The Foundation’s grants to the Younger Scholars program have been absolutely “no strings attached”; a committee of three judges, culled from editorial board members of OSM, makes the call, not me (committees have included Karen Bennett, Hud Hudson, Trenton Merricks, Ted Sider, Andrew Cortens, Yuri Balashov, and John Hawthorne, among others). I can’t imagine a pleasanter relationship with a grantor than mine with Ammonius.

As Marc steps down, I want to thank him publically for his steadfast support of excellence in metaphysics. But I know that public praise and attention is the last thing he wants — he wants our attention drawn, not to him, but to the ideas in his metaphysical system. So the only way I can adequately say “thanks” is to encourage you to check it out for yourself: Coming to Understanding.